Dear Mrs. Palin

I was also not one of those people who's parents got me a passport and bought me a backpack and sent me off to Europe after college. Like you, I often worked two or three jobs through college and after. Yet I have a passport and I've used it and though I have to work to pay my bills and keep a roof over my head, you can bet that I plan on using it again and again in my lifetime.

Out of all the ridiculously stupid things you stuttered out at Katy Couric in your interview on foreign policy, I felt that your implication that harboring a desire and curiosity to understand other cultures and to see other countries as something elitist was possibly the most offensive.

It is not elitist or un-American to travel abroad. Before I went truly abroad for the first time (like you, I lived for many years right next to another country to which I traveled many times), I was disaffected and angry with the U.S.A. I won't go into my reasons. Spending time abroad not only taught me a great deal about how other people live, how they are not so much different than you or me and that I really, truly loved the country I came from to begin with.

It is obvious you have been nowhere and that you have been exposed to very few types of people outside your own community. You claim to have explored the world through books, yet your lack of eloquence would lead me to believe that you haven't read anything but the back of a cereal box in a long, long time.

Also, instead of looking down (or being jealous) of families who can afford to introduce the world to their children, we should applaud them. They are doing a great service by their kids.

I really dislike you. I really, really dislike you. I get a creepy crawly feeling when I see your face and hear your voice.

Anyway, I am off to study another language. I hope you stick to English. You should think about taking a class in it.

<3 Sir William Shakespeare